I was glad to get away from the dance and even from Gilbert, who tonight was awkward and different. My life, I thought peevishly, had devolved into nothing more than a succession of village dances. Besides, Akiva was busy and secretive, hiding away most days in her library or out in deep forest, and hadn’t seemed at all keen for me to be back in the little cottage with her. I wondered if I’d done something wrong. At all events, I thought mulishly; after tonight I was going back to Akiva, whether or not she wanted me. I had an idea she was up to something.
Bastian was waiting for me when I finally managed to slip away without being seen, familiar and wolfish. I had masked my forest signature immediately upon entering the forest, nervous about following Cassandra even on someone else’s wardship. Cassandra was not only clever, she knew every thread and vibration in the forest. I was careful not to use the rabbit signature this time.
Bastian trotted forward to me meet me, casual and relaxed. “No movement yet, but it shouldn’t be long.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “I thought I wouldn’t get here in time. What is she doing, do you think? Is she trying to make Mara disappear?”
“Who knows what goes on in that pretty little head of hers? No, stay back, little witch. She’ll sense us if we get too close.”
“Won’t she sense you at once? You most particularly, I mean.”
“I’ve been hiding from Cassandra long enough to have learned a few tricks, little witch. The only place I’m not safe is in her wardship. Quiet now, here she comes.”
We stayed nearly a full wardship behind Cassandra, pacing along the threads just quickly enough not to lose her, and just slowly enough to avoid putting out excessive energy that Cassandra would certainly have noticed. I walked with one hand buried in the ruff of Bastian’s neck, feeling somehow safer with the warmth of his fur beneath my hand.
We trailed Cassandra until we were in the amalgamated section that had once been many wardships but was now Mara’s; then deeper still until we were in the portion of the forest that had always been Mara’s. The forest had changed from late summer to winter, to autumn, and back to summer by the time we reached Mara’s own wardship. Bastian and I prowled at the edges of the wardship, wary about diving right in. Faint lines still showed where the division between wardships had once been, and it felt safer to be on the other side of the faintly marked wardship from Cassandra. I gently pinched a forest line between thumb and forefinger, catching a vibration of Cassandra’s footsteps, and followed it until I could see her circling Mara’s house. Crouched beside Bastian as I was, with my arm around his neck, he could see all that I could see. He growled a low, soft, puzzled growl.
“What’s she doing?” I whispered. Bastian’s ear twitched as my breath tickled his sensitive ear hairs.
“I don’t know. I can’t sense any magic.”
“Me neither. Perhaps she really is trying to take Mara.”
“Mara would be the logical choice, before she comes into the full potential of all the wardships. Hold fast, little witch, something is about to happen.”
I had sensed it, too, a gathering of power on the thread I held. There was a slight snap, and then Cassandra was no longer by the house or even on the same thread. An instant later she materialized some way behind us, sending a ripple through the forest.
“The house, now!” Bastian shot at me.
We turned tail and ran. Mara’s house, neat and square and orderly in the forest, was our only hope of safety. We dashed through myriad, lightning-fast threads to get there ahead of Cassandra, shocked at the suddenness of detection. Blackness pursued us, long thin tendrils of Cassandra’s magic shooting along the threads after us at high speed. Tiny, fibrous filaments of the black stuff attached themselves to Bastian’s fur. His breathing became first laboured, and then strained as the spell took hold. At length so many threads had caught in the fur at the ruff of his neck that he was unceremoniously dragged backwards, growling savagely. I dashed back to help him, my eyes wide with apprehension, but Bastian snapped at the hand I stretched out, and snarled: “Keep going, Rose!”
“No!” My voice squeaked with indignation. When I reached out again Bastian snapped more savagely, this time catching my hand between his teeth and drawing blood.
“Get Mara!” he snapped. “She’s the only one who can help now.”
I cradled my hand, staring at him in wide-eyed disbelief. “You bit me!”
Bastian gave a truly vicious snarl, one I had not heard since he had tried to eat me all those years ago. “Go now, Rose!”
I did as I was told that time. I heard Bastian yelp once, high and sharp, before I cannoned into a sharp, wiry body which immediately seized me in an iron grip. One hand pinched the nape of my neck: the other forced my head back. I found myself staring wildly up at Mara and loosened my clutching fingers from her arm.
The grip around my neck tightened painfully. “What are you playing at?” Mara demanded.
“Bastian!” I gasped, breathlessly. “Please help him! Cassandra!”
Mara seemed to understand my incoherent urgency, because she released me and strode down the thread I had arrived on without further questions. The forest was horribly silent around us after the yelp I heard from Bastian. As we travelled, cold and swift, I wondered sickeningly if Cassandra had actually killed him. A sob caught at the back of my throat at the thought, because no matter what the forest did to Cassandra in retribution, Bastian would still be dead.
Cassandra was standing over Bastian’s motionless body when we saw her, a high colour in her cheeks that made her, if possible, even more beautiful than usual.
Mara said calmly: “What have you done, Cassandra?”
It was then that I realised the pinkness of Cassandra’s cheeks was not that of triumph, but fury; and I held my breath in sudden hope.
“Breathe, child,” Mara said softly to me, and her assurance filled me with relief. “He is not dead.”
I let my breath out in something very like a sob, and dropped to my knees beside Bastian, laying my head on his furry chest to hear for myself the faint but steady beat of his heart. He was not quite unconscious, because I felt the huff of his breath as he nudged his nose into my neck, and heard him say my name with a kind of wonder in his voice that he was still alive.
“Why isn’t he dead?” demanded Cassandra. It certainly wasn’t from any lack of trying on her part. There was a blackness roiling about her slender fingers, and the same darkness clouded around Bastian. I began to wonder if the forest didn’t care more for preventative than punitive measures.
“He should be dead! Why isn’t he dead?”
There was a bitter kind of mocking to Bastian’s thready voice. “Self-sacrificing altruism, you old cow,” he jeered, and lost consciousness.
Cassandra gave a scream of rage, her fingers curling into fists, and kicked Bastian’s prone body with her soft satin slippers as if they were metal sabatons. It would almost have been funny if I weren’t so concerned for Bastian. His chest still only barely rose and fell with his breath: there was no telling what Cassandra had done to him.
“Stop that at once!” Mara said sharply, taking a swift step forward.
Cassandra kicked Bastian one last time, viciously, and said sibilantly to his unresponsive ears: “I will kill you, wolf.”
The quiet malice in her voice sent an involuntary shiver through me, but Mara stood her ground, unmoved.
“You will harm neither the wolf nor Akiva’s apprentice on any of my wardship,” she said coldly. “Do you understand, Cassandra?”
They locked gazes, violet eyes to icy blue ones. Cassandra’s gaze dropped first.
Her smile was brittle and enchanting as she said: “I will see you another time, little rabbit.”
I watched her go with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, but Mara allowed me no time to meditate on my fears.
“Take his legs,” she said. “I’ll attend to his head.”
We lifted awkwardly, out of time with each other. Bastian proved to be heavier than either of us expected, and Mara pitched forward into me, tumbling us both into the dew-wet grass. The wooden comb in her neat bun caught me painfully below one eye, leaving a throbbing indent that promised to become a splendid bruise before very many minutes passed. Mara, her bun ridiculously on one side, did not escape her share of mud and grass stains. As a result, she was rather waspish by the time she rose to her feet, scraping back tendrils of escaping hair with an attempt at dignity.
“Clearly this is not the most sensible option,” she said, with a flush of pink in each cheek.
Recovering her self-possession, she plucked several evergreen leaves from the surrounding trees and fixed them together with tiny threads of ice-blue magic that had little to do with the forest. The leaves grew brittly brown at the edges and drew away from the threads, but remained fixed together; and when she made a motion as if shaking the thing out, it grew with each snap and flick until it was some ten times its original size. Mara let it drift gently in the air before her, and then shooed it forward to wrap around Bastian swiftly and efficiently until he was a nondescript bundle hovering a foot in the air.
“Much better,” Mara said in satisfaction. “You’d better walk with me, child; Cassandra won’t have gone far.”
I nodded meekly, relieved that I hadn’t had to ask for her escort. Neither of my attempts at spying had gone particularly well, and I was feeling nastily vulnerable. I trailed humbly along behind Mara as she strode through the moonlit forest at incredible, soundless speed, and found that we had arrived in Akiva’s wardship almost before I was aware of it.
I had no time to worry about what Akiva was going to say, but fortunately enough I wasn’t called upon to explain myself. Mara commandeered the explanations, and I was grateful to her for failing to mention that Bastian and I had been following Cassandra, or that we had trespassed extensively on her wardship. She said only that Cassandra had attacked us, and that she had been near enough to help. I could have hugged her for her kindness.
“The wolf will need some time to recover,” Mara added briefly.
To my annoyance, they then held a murmured conversation from which I was pointedly excluded by magic that was as impenetrable as it was insulting.
At length Akiva said to me: “Rose, I am afraid that Bastian will have to go with you.”
Mara nodded a goodnight to us both and took herself off, and I was left to gaze worriedly down at the tightly wrapped figure of Bastian.
“Bastian said the change will be permanent if he gets caught out of the forest when he changes.”
“Yes. You’ll have to take some of the forest with you,” Akiva said. “I won’t be able to care for him. I have business in deep forest that can’t wait.”
I looked swiftly up at her, alerted by a change in her usually steady cadence. “You mean deeper forest,” I said accusingly.
Akiva’s brows snapped together. “That is not something you should know about! Hold your tongue, child, and do as you are told! We will take him to your mother tomorrow morning; my business can’t be detained any longer.”
“I could help,” I said, a little sadly. I felt oddly abandoned and useless.
“You could help, or you could be killed,” Akiva said, and the stiffness in her voice caused an absurd little bubble of happiness to break at the back of my throat. She was concerned for me.
“I want to be sure that no more wardens disappear. I will call on you when I need you.”
And so, discontented, I was forced to be content.
Akiva and Mother discussed the matter in the kitchen, voices low and hard to hear. Bastian was in front of the hearth on a rough mattress, with a fire lit to combat his fits of shivering, while the rest of us gazed curiously on him. Gwendolen’s expression was one of nose-wrinkled curiosity, Thomas’ of understanding, and David’s face was furrowed with a thoughtful frown.
None of them had objected to being woken in the wee hours of the morning: in fact, Thomas and David hadn’t yet gone to bed and Gwendolen had only just returned from the dance.
The boys spent the night absorbed in a game of chess with a quickly dwindling bottle of brandy to keep them company, and Gwendolen, satisfied that she was beautiful in the entrancing disorder of loose curls, was perfectly content to be a party to night time adventures so long as no one expected her to be more than decorative.
I fell asleep crouched uncomfortably beside Bastian some time before Mother and Akiva finished their discussion, and awoke many hours later to broad daylight and the information Akiva was gone. Mother was in a surprisingly good humour. Thomas and David were still at their chess match, but Gwendolen had flitted back off to bed. Bastian, deep into a fever, was changing constantly from wolf to man and back again, surrounded imperceptibly by the forest spell that Akiva had worked on him.
“He’s been doing that for the last few hours,” Thomas told me, looking up while David made his move. “Two changes every hour, like clockwork.”
I stayed by Bastian’s side all day, taking my meals by the uncomfortably warm fire, and anxiously noting each change as it occurred. He didn’t recover consciousness, but neither did his fever grow worse. When night drew on without any change, Mother chivvied me into my own bed to spend the night, and set her rocking chair by Bastian’s side. As I crawled beneath the sheet, David’s shadow slipped past my open door to keep her company.
It wasn’t until nearly a week had passed that Bastian regained consciousness. I wasn’t there to see it: Gilbert had called around to take me for a walk, and Mother had insisted on my going with him, if only to get us out of the house. She seemed anxious to prevent anyone from seeing Bastian, and in his present state, I was no less anxious.
So I walked with Gilbert, talking agreeably; and found myself agreeing to go to the last summer dance of the season with him. My acquiescence brought a glow to his eyes that made me slightly uneasy. I wondered for the first time if perhaps I could have mistaken the feelings that Gilbert had for me. I remembered the sensation of eager warmth I’d had when we first met, and found myself worried and slightly claustrophobic.
I was frowning thoughtfully as I entered the house again, just in time to hear Bastian’s voice in conversation with Mother’s.
“Bastian!” I flung the door shut with a careless joy that made it slam loudly, and dashed for the hearth. “You’re awake!”
He was smiling up at Mother when my eyes fell on them, and it came to me with relief that they quite liked one another, even if they seemed to do so with a touch of wariness. Bastian turned his smile on me, and I thought it grew wider, his hazel eyes softer than I was used to seeing them.
“Little witch!” he hailed me, rising on one elbow. “Your mother and I have been getting acquainted.”
Mother kissed my forehead briefly as I knelt beside her chair. “Have some lunch with us, Rosie. Bastian and I have been talking about his unfortunate . . . situation.”
I eyed her warily, but she didn’t look cross: I hoped that Bastian had not told her I kissed him, especially since it had done no good.
“Don’t look so worried, Rose,” Mother said, laughing. “I was merely telling him that this sorceress seems to have tricked his body into thinking that he is ill. I can find nothing wrong with him bodily.”
I let a soft breath escape carefully. Oh. That situation. “What do you mean?”
Interest sparked in Mother’s eyes. “I talked with Akiva. There’s no curse. No spell.”
I frowningly considered Bastian, who said with some exasperation: “I’m not prone to imagination, madam! My legs lack the strength to stand.”
“Not imagination, exactly,” said Mother. “It’s more of a suggestion, I believe.”
I flicked my eyes over him once again. Mother and Akiva were right: there was no curse attached to him. Around his mind were cobwebby somethings that could have been thoughts but were more likely to be what Mother had called them: suggestions.
They were filmy and didn’t look like they would last much longer, so I said to Mother: “Don’t worry. I’ll take care of it.”
Mother looked mildly amused, but took her cue anyway. “I’ll be out with the washing if you need me,” she said, and left us alone.
We sat for some moments in companionable silence until Bastian, playing idly with my fingers, found the puckering scar that his own teeth had caused.
He ran his thumb along it, frowning. “I apologize for that, little witch.”
I shrugged, resisting an odd, shy impulse to pull my hand away. “It’s only a scratch; it will fade.”
“I believe I snarled at you.”
“I thought you hated me for a moment,” I told him candidly. There had been such an anger to his voice that night, caught in Cassandra’s magic.
Bastian’s eyes flicked up at me, and I thought he looked stricken. “I did, for the barest second. I hated you for making me protect you.”
“You knew I wouldn’t get back in time with Mara,” I said, in cold realization. “I could have freed you!”
“Not in time,” Bastian said tiredly. “Let’s not go over it, little witch. Forgive me.”
I threw my arms around his neck. “There’s nothing to forgive, silly. I thought you were dead.”
“You flatter me, my love,” Bastian said, sitting up in order to put one arm around me.
I couldn’t help grinning because Mother was right: when he wasn’t thinking about it, Bastian was perfectly healthy. “Would it make you sorry?”
“Of course!” I said, pushing my luck by rising to my feet. “I wouldn’t have anyone to quarrel with, and that would be a shame.”
Bastian rose with me, all unthinking. It wasn’t until we had walked the length of the room that he stopped, thunderstruck.
“You little minx! You’ve bewitched me!”
“You’re just grumpy because Mother was right,” I said.
“The vindictive old cow!” Bastian said in amazement. “I could have thought myself into a decline!”
“It’s just as well you have me to look after you, then, isn’t it?” I told him pertly; and, having deprived him of both breath and speech, I skipped out into the garden to gleefully inform Mother that she had been right.
Bastian stayed with us only a few more days after that, until Akiva summoned me back to the forest. Mother seemed quietly pleased to have him there. Gwendolen was cross, but her anger was directed more at me. She took me aside indignantly after dinner one night to inform me that Bastian was very good-looking, and why had I not told her? I eyed her in some amazement, and replied truthfully that I hadn’t noticed. Looks were not a thing I thought about when I was with Bastian.
But Gwendolen’s crossness was not directed merely at me: she and Thomas had quarrelled, I gathered, from Gwendolen’s somewhat incoherent mutterings. Thomas continued to visit just as usual, and seemed not to notice Gwendolen turning the cold shoulder, which infuriated her all the more. To add to her fury, Bastian was inclined to tease her in an elder-brotherly way that she wasn’t at all used to in a male.
All in all it was a relief to step back into the cool silence of the forest, late one afternoon. Summer was cooling off to autumn, and in two days the last summer dance would be held; to which, I remembered somewhat uneasily, I was accompanying Gilbert. I found that I didn’t want to think about it, so I let the thought flit out of my mind like an autumn leaf and concentrated on enjoying the forest. Bastian had melted away into the forest upon my return, leaving me to find my way to Akiva alone, and before long my heart was light and free. It felt good to be home.
When I entered the cottage a few minutes later, Akiva greeted me with sharp relief. “Ah, there you are! How goes David?”
“The same,” I told her, revelling in the scent of the cottage. I could smell peaches in the air, where the waving branches of the peach-tree desk wafted their scent through the room. Mixed with it was the dry, herby aroma of Akiva’s supplies.
“And the wolf?”
“Better. He’s in the forest.”
Akiva gave her characteristic grunt. “Hm. Cassandra is unhappy. He should stick to the wardship.”
“I’ll tell him. Akiva, are you leaving?”
She looked at me sharply, then nodded. “My business in deep forest brought something disturbing to light. I need you to care for the wardship while I investigate.”
I bit back what I knew to be a vain plea to be included in the investigation, and nodded. “Will you be gone long?”
“I don’t know,” she said, and I saw that she was weary. “I need to speak with Mara, and I need an invitation to deeper forest.”
“What does Mara know?”
“More than she has been sharing,” Akiva said. “The disturbance in the forest is running even deeper than deep forest, and she knows it. Someone has been altering deeper forest to suit their needs.”
I tried and failed to think of anyone powerful enough to alter deeper forest. Even Cassandra couldn’t do that, surely. “Is that why the forest has been all wrong?”
“Yes. It could have coped with disappearing wardens, but not with alterations to deeper forest as well.”
“Can you change it back?” I asked anxiously. I was not keen to see more sections of forest blackening and dying.
Akiva gave a bitter laugh. “You flatter me, child. No, I can’t change it back, I can only find out who is responsible. To reverse damages to deeper forest requires a full council of wardens, and at the last count we were six short.”
She was jerking tight the strings of a little rucksack as she spoke, on the point of departure. I knew I had only a few moments before she left, so I spoke quickly. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Keep the wardship safe,” she said, hoisting the sack to her shoulder. “Keep Bastian close. And stay away from Cassandra.”
The house was quiet and still after she left. I looked around me listlessly and found to my surprise that Akiva had let the cottage go all to pieces while she was busy. None of her cooking utensils were washed, nor were any of the clothes, and dust lay thick on the windowsills. Ingredients were put down every which where instead of neatly on the workbench, and the kettle that sat on the hob was ringed in gradually lower circles of crusted tea, showing a progression of re-boiling without cleaning. I sucked in my cheeks as I considered the probable potency of the brew before deciding that discretion was the better part of valour. I threw it out.
The salamander, in its usual haunt below the tea-kettle, looked sulky and emitted only a slight glow. It did so love attention; and Akiva, by the looks of things, had been giving attention to nothing but her own, secretive business.
I pottered about the house, tidying and straightening everything that didn’t need to be washed. I would have to draw water for washing the dishes later, and the clothes would have to wait until tomorrow to be taken to the stream for washing. After a little while the salamander crawled out of the fireplace and climbed up my leg to curl about my shoulder in the familiar way it used to.
I thought it looked reproachfully at me, and I said excusingly: “I didn’t go away on purpose, you know. Akiva sent me away.”
The salamander clicked twice and seemed satisfied, because it tucked its head down under my chin, and went to sleep.
The next day was bright and sunny, and I went down to the stream with my basketful of washing to get an early start on the day. Instead, I found myself sitting by the stream, daydreaming in the warm sunlight with the pile of dirty clothes beside me on the hot rock. One of Akiva’s petticoats dangled from my fingers, fabric rippling on the current. Beside me were my old boots, polished to take away the dust and forgotten while I ruminated. It had occurred to me, you see, that it would be a marvellous idea to try and match Gilbert with Gwendolen. By the time I left Mother and Gwen, Gwendolen had proceeded to the stage of whipping around the house like a miniature whirlwind, tidying and angrily declaring her perfect indifference for Thomas every few moments. I thought that if she weren’t to have Thomas she could have Gilbert, and make him not interested in me anymore.
I was so deeply immersed in my scheming that when Bastian strolled from the forest and said affably: “Rose, my lovely!” I started and nearly lost Akiva’s petticoat.
He grinned his peculiarly wolfish grin down at me, and said: “Daydreaming, Rose? About me, I hope.”
I grinned back up at him and resumed washing the petticoat. “No: Gilbert.”
“Pleasant daydreams, then,” jeered Bastian, his affability vanishing. “Asked you to marry him, has he?”
“No, of course not!” I said impatiently, offended at his tone and stung because his jibe hit a little closer to home than I was comfortable with. “I was thinking it would be a good thing if he and Gwen got married.”
Bastian looked at me narrowly for a moment and then gave a short laugh. “It won’t work,” he said, settling himself down on the other side of the pile of dirty washing and beginning on another of Akiva’s petticoats with surprising proficiency.
“Why not?” I demanded.
“Because no man who looks twice at you is likely to be fobbed off with Gwendolen,” Bastian said lazily. “But by all means try it. In fact, tell me when you mean to, because I want to see his face.”
“But Gwendolen is much prettier than me,” I argued. I began to think that it was all one big Bastian-joke, because of course anyone would rather marry Gwen than me.
“I believe the time has come to explain to you just how delicious you are,” said Bastian, with the hunting smile that showed the tips of his teeth.
It was an unsettling smile, and I found his face too close for comfort, so I put one wet hand over it and pushed him away. “No.”
Bastian’s voice, muffled and softly amused, said: “Little witch, take away your hand.”
“No. You’re being silly.”
“If you don’t, I’ll have to do something drastic,” he warned.
“Like what?” I asked speculatively, and felt the curve of a smile on the palm of my hand.
“Kiss you, of course.”
I dropped my hand in surprise, looking doubtfully at him for signs of the blackness. All I could see was gold.
“That won’t help break the curse,” I said. “I have to kiss you, not the other way around.”
It would probably be unfair to say that Bastian howled with laughter. But when, after a moment of incredulous silence, he began to laugh, it was no gentle chuckle. I eyed him sourly, unsure if I were being laughed at or if Bastian were merely being silly, and threw a wet pillowcase at his head.
“Bufflehead!”
His laughter didn’t abate, and I went on with my washing in cross silence, ignoring him. When at last Bastian’s hilarity did die away, the silence was pleasant enough that I didn’t notice until a few moments later that he had picked up one of the shoes I had been polishing earlier. They were my only shoes, perhaps a little small for me now, and I had polished them until they shone, much to my own bemusement.
“I’m going to the last summer dance,” I said, annoyed to feel a slight flush in my cheeks. I wasn’t sure quite why I had put my shoes out after so many years barefoot: I thought that it had something to do with my sudden conviction that Gilbert liked me better than I had thought. It had occurred to me that I wanted not to embarrass him. I found that thought unsettling also.
Bastian looked up with a narrowed gaze, the laughter quite gone from his eyes. “With whom?”
“With Gilbert,” I said defiantly, refusing to meet his eyes. There was a sharp snap! and when I turned my head, startled, Bastian was still holding my shoe, its lace broken.
He tossed it to me carelessly and said: “I suppose I might have known.”
I turned back to my washing, annoyed to find that I was still blushing.
“Akiva has gone again,” I said, hoping to change the subject. There was a bare ripple of movement beside me, and then Bastian had gone, leaving me to stare after him in perplexed indignation. I had wanted, I thought resentfully, to invite him to the dance. Now I would be left alone with Gilbert, not to mention Gwendolen and her coy glances.
I finished the washing in a decidedly worse mood than I had begun it, and pegged the wet garments to the clothes line with some asperity. We had been good friends only yesterday, Bastian and I. I felt aggrieved at his irritability, as aggrieved as I was bemused. I could talk to him as I couldn’t talk to Akiva, or even Mother; and I had become used to his teasing. I didn’t like the feeling that we were at outs.
I returned to the cottage moodily, striding through deep forest without delay or detour. It wasn’t until I got back that I realised I had left my shoes, broken and alone, by the stream. I left them there.